Lionel 57" smoking refer 2026510.

The brake shoes on the inside of the metal trucks of the 57' Mechanical Refrigerator cars appear to be press fit plastic parts.

These black brake shoe details are hard to see when the black truck is on the tracks unless the tracks are lit up from the underside. Did not expect there to be these parts.

The main feature of the Mechanical Refrigerator car is the smoke generator and how long before the smoke fluid takes to gradually build up to generate the steam effect.

You would have to send the car to the LIONEL service center to replace the couplers.

Couplers on gondolas and covered hoppers produced in CHINA in the past year are also easily pulled open from weight.

Andrew

They only included a green led on 1 version.  Return it!

I had two of the brake shoes fall off mine as I took it out of the box.  Superglued them back on, but that was clearly a bad omen.  After putting it on the track, nothing happened.  I discovered the plastic liners had pushed the rollers up so they didn’t make track contact.

Easy  fix and the car made sound.  

But no smoke.  Blew into the fill hole, no smoke.  Made sure the doors were open, per the instructions

sent a note to Lionel “Talk to Us”.  No response.  Called.  On hold long enough I got the “mailbox is full” message.  A couple more times.  Same results.

Even wrote a letter asking for a response.  No response.

Finally got an email asking if I could feel heat by the smoke outlet.  None, so wrote back again asking about returning it for an RA to let me send it in for repair

still nothing.

Latest email went in this morning

Shame, since in the past I’ve had good experience with Lionel’s repair folks

Have not tried my BNSF unit but it did arrive with two brake shoes sitting in the box.

I put scented smoke fluid in my Santa Fe 57' Mechanical Refrigerator.

I am getting the Cinnamon scent after several minutes of operation, but not the smoke/steam effect yet.

Perhaps it will require more smoke fluid and more time to start generating the smoke/steam effect.

Andrew

Andrew, what’s your track voltage? Mine gives me more smoke than I want after a minute at about 16V.

I’m on the fence on this one. If I can put a ERR mini commander in it to turn the smoke on/off it will be more practical for my operating needs.

I got the Santa Fe version and I was also confused by the lack of the green LED light as advertised. Overall, mine was in good condition but it appears that only the BNSF version has the green LED light. I like the car and the sound set but I mainly keep the door closed, which automatically turns the smoke off as a safety feature.

I have the Santa Fe Mech Refrigerator operating in full voltage for TrainMaster Command Control.

Perhaps I need to add more smoke fluid.  I do not want to overfill the smoke fluid.

Andrew

Call your dealer and see if they will replace the unit.  If they have unsold stock they may swap it out and return the non-working unit ti Lionel.